Bootable Ubuntu Touch images are now available for the Nexus smartphone and tablet lines.

Nicholas Skaggs, a Canonical software engineer and quality assurance community coordinator, wrote, "I'm happy to announce the Ubuntu touch images are now available for testing on the isotracker. And further, the images are now Raring based! [That is to say, they're based on the soon to be released Ubuntu 13.04 codebase.] As such, the Ubuntu Touch team is asking for folks to try out the new images on their devices and ensure there are no regressions or other issues."

Specifically, there are four officially supported devices and images for each of them: Nexus 7, grouper; Galaxy Nexus, maguro; Nexus 4, mako; and Nexus 10, manta. These are all early releases and I recommend that only power Ubuntu and smartphone/tablet users try them at this point.

"Once all the kinks and potential issues are worked out (your feedback requested!), the Raring based images will become the default, and, moving forward, the team will continue to provide daily images and participate in testing milestones," concluded Skaggs.

Don't have a Nexus device? In a note, Skaggs added that while there are "No official images, people have been busy porting! Have a look here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices". These devices range from the Dell Streak 7 to the Kindle Fire to Motorola Droid 4 to a wide variety of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

More supported devices will be coming. On Google Plus, Jono Bacon, Canonical's community manager, wrote: